The Light Keeper's Legacy (A Chloe Ellefson Mystery) (7 page)

Eleven: October, 1873

Emily woke and saw
at once that the light needed tending. The bed she shared with William faced north; she knew what the light should look like, shining on the honeysuckle bushes on the edge of the bluff. She eased from the bed and tiptoed to the cradle. In the moonlight she saw her infant, Jane, sleeping on her back, one thumb in her mouth. Her dream of bringing children and their laughter and games and joy to Pottawatomie was coming true. Emily blew the baby a silent kiss, slipped on her shoes, crept from the room, and lit the lantern kept always ready.

After deeming that whale oil was too expensive for the Great Lakes, the U.S. Lighthouse Service had decreed that tenders use lard instead, hauled smelly and cheap from the Chicago stockyards. She and William always kept a kettle of rendered lard on the back of the second-story stove. I’d like to see one of those officials manage that, Emily thought. Lard congealed quickly. On cold nights she and William made endless trips up the steep stairs to the tower with buckets of hot fat in hand. She’d hemmed her nightdress high so she wouldn’t trip while navigating the ladder-like steps with lantern and fuel.

Now she added wood to the stove, filled a pail with liquid fat, and climbed carefully to the tower. The light was burning, but not well. She replaced viscous lard with fresh, and adjusted the vents to improve circulation. There, now. That was better.

I should go down, Emily thought. She’d need to feed Jane before dawn, and she had a full day ahead. Still she paused. The view was spectacular, and she never tired of drinking it in. Above the light’s beam, a million stars glittered in the sky. The silhouettes of trees showed black against the paler midnight tones of the lake and sky.

And—thanks to her—the channel was safe for any schooner captain making for Green Bay. It was a privilege to guard the channel, but an enormous responsibility as well.

Emily smiled. Her husband and daughter slept peacefully below, and she had friends nearby. Spending time with Ragna was a special pleasure, but Emily knew all the village women. They called on her when someone was ill or ready to deliver a child. Emily taught school for their children, too. She loved seeing the sons and daughters of fishermen—Yankee, Irish, German, Scandinavian—troop from the woods on schooldays. She had set up a schoolroom in the lighthouse cellar.

Emily took one last look at the night. Sometimes she thought her heart might simply burst with contentment.

Twelve

I’m losing it, Chloe
thought early the next morning.
Very
early. She sat on the picnic table, drinking bad coffee, listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir of avian choruses, trying to figure out what the heck was going on inside her head.

Bottom line: she had no idea.

Her own ideas about having children were tangled, but she surely wasn’t conjuring the sound of happy kids out of suppressed maternal instincts. She wasn’t sure she was ready for a romance, much less a family. Relationship issues aside, though, she was definitely hearing things at Pottawatomie Lighthouse.

Chloe had never known what to call her mild receptive ability, tuning into the layers of lives come and gone in historic structures. Sometimes those emotions lingered, like perfume that only she could smell. But impressions from photographs? The sound of children’s laughter? Those were whole new talents she’d never asked for, never wished for, and she would have to keep hidden.

“Oh, goody,” she muttered. Just what she needed. She didn’t
want
her powers of perception to grow stronger. She worked in the history field, for God’s sake! If her abilities were increasing, would she be able to keep little episodes like this hidden from colleagues?

And
…
oh geez, what about Roelke? He could sniff out a lie or evasion at fifty paces. But she couldn’t imagine confiding in him, either.

OK, she told herself. You don’t know how this new little nuisance will develop. It’s too soon to panic. For the moment, at least, move on.

She switched over to thinking about the naked young woman she’d found on the beach. A woman whose name evidently began with
N
. Nancy? Nicole? Noreen? Natalie? An image of the young kayaker who’d gone for help, strong and capable and—thank
goodness—quite alive, flashed through Chloe’s mind. May she
always paddle safely on the big lakes, Chloe thought fervently.

Maybe the
N
didn’t stand for a name. Chloe tried to think of a religious name or prayer that some curious stranger might have
symbolized with the letter N. Something like Jesus or Allah or
Mohammed or Buddha. There might be a relevant name in Pottawatomie or Menominee or Ojibwe, and there must be some Catholic saints with N names, but she didn’t know.

One word finally popped into her beleaguered brain:
Namaste
. Her college yoga teacher always said that at the end of class. Chloe had never heard a literal translation, but it had to mean good-bye, go in peace—something like that.

“There we go,” Chloe told a brown thrasher hopping through the grass. Some grieving yogi had built a cairn on the Pottawatomie beach to say good-bye to a young woman who had gotten drunk on a cruise across Lake Michigan, stripped naked, fallen overboard, and drowned.

Right.

Her mental gymnastics were so absurd that she welcomed the arrival of Maintenance Mel in the truck. After the ritual exchange of empty Igloo for full one, Mel paused. “You doing OK out here?” he asked gruffly.

“Yes, thanks.” Except for the naked dead woman and children playing nocturnal games.

“You’re pretty isolated out here. Anything could happen, and there’s no way to get help quickly if you need it.”

Gee, thanks for reminding me, Chloe thought. But he was from another generation, and in his own way, he was probably trying to be nice. “I’ve done a lot of wilderness camping,” she said mildly. “I’ll be fine.”

Once Mel left, Chloe felt edgy with pent-up energy. She wanted to talk to Garrett, and she had plenty of time before the first ferry arrived this morning anyway. Might as well take the long way down to the dock, circling around Rock Island’s east side. Chloe rinsed out her mug, laced on her hiking boots, and headed out.

She came to the cemetery Sylvie had mentioned almost immediately. Chloe bowed her head in respect, then hurried on her way. She wasn’t in the mood to contemplate the final moments of anyone drowning in Lake Michigan. It was surely a cold and lonely death.

The trail wound through the woods, offering glorious glimpses of the lake. Chloe descended among stands of birch and beech and juniper. After a mile or so she was ready to unzip her jacket and enjoy the sunshine.

This
is why I came here, she thought, drinking in the day like champagne. She’d always relished solitude, always craved being outdoors. During her college days in West Virginia, she’d had plenty of friends to go camping with but still sometimes headed
out on solo backpacking trips. Dolly Sods Wilderness Area,
Canaan Valley, the Appalachian Trail
…
the natural beauty, and the absolute freedom to set her own pace, always did her good.

She paused to watch a nuthatch work its way down a tree. And I needed something good, she thought. Even before she found a body tangled in fishnet and started hearing children at night. She remembered how disapproving Roelke had looked as she packed the car. He was so different from any other guy she’d ever dated! She was used to hanging out with history nerds who got passionate about vernacular architecture or colonial foodways, folklorists who wore hand-painted neckties or earrings made from old watch parts, naturalists who didn’t blink when a friend headed off for some solitary trek. Roelke was an overprotective, tightly wound, oh-so-German cop.

Who was also smart. Who loved and cared for his cousin’s kids. Who had taken her sky-diving when she needed it—even though she hadn’t had a
clue
she needed it. Who looked pretty darn fine when he lost the uniform and gun, and went for hiking boots and jeans and a tight T-shirt instead.

My feelings are clear as custard, Chloe thought.

About a mile and a half from the lighthouse, the canopy opened and revealed a meadow. The limbs of several old apple trees were bent with red fruit. The lake rippled in jewel tones of green and blue beneath a sky studded with cumulous clouds.

“
Oh
,” Chloe breathed, enchanted. She left the trail as if lured by the Pied Piper.

If Rock Island’s green forest still clung to late summer, the meadow had embraced early autumn. Chloe walked through waist-high grasses rippling brown and tan in the breeze. A few clumps of goldenrod and pale purple asters glowed in the sun. With every step a cloud of grasshoppers flew ahead of her. Two crows scolded from a dead birch tree. “Don’t mind me,” Chloe told them. “I’m just visiting.”

The meadow ended at a fringe of shrubby deciduous trees above the cobbled beach. Chloe didn’t realize she wasn’t alone until she almost stumbled upon another woman. “Oh!” Chloe said again.

“Good morning!” The woman had been crouching beside the trees, winding string between four stakes marking a square of disturbed ground about the size of two shovel widths, but she rose. “I’m Brenda Noakes. Are you Chloe?”

“That’s me.” Chloe shook the offered hand, trying to think. Ah, yes. Brenda Noakes—the archaeologist.

Brenda was perhaps fifty, deeply tanned, with light brown hair pulled away from her face in a simple ponytail. She wore a blue ball cap monogrammed with
EC
. “Any relation to the local Ellefsons?”

“It’s pretty distant. So, you’re doing a dig here?”

“I wish.”

“Um
…
” Chloe glanced pointedly at the stakes. It sure looked as if Ms. Noakes was conducting a dig.

“Oh.” Brenda gave a wry smile. “I have a permit to define the limits of the fishing village site. Right now I have a little window of time between the summer crowds and the autumn leaf-peepers. Next week I have to head back to Escanaba. I teach there.” She waved her arm in the vague direction of Escanaba, Michigan, which was maybe thirty miles distant across the lake to the northwest.

“Ah!” Chloe nodded. She’d taken one basic archaeology course in grad school, and tried to retrieve some intelligent tidbit from memory’s rusty file drawers. “Test pits?”

“Right. I’m excavating a few pits, looking for evidence of buildings.”

It was coming back now. Brenda would be making test pits every five meters or so, looking for evidence of human disturbance. “Found anything interesting?”

“Not yet.” Brenda pulled a pack of cigarettes and lighter from her pocket. She glanced at Chloe and sighed. “Don’t worry, I’m planning to quit.”

Chloe shrugged. “No business of mine.” Unless Brenda tossed her butt aside.

“Anyway, I’ve yet to secure funding for a proper dig.” Brenda lit
up and took a deep drag. “A decade ago, archaeologists found
evidence of native peoples occupying Rock going back centuries. Pottawatomie, Huron, Ottawa. But nothing’s been done on more recent inhabitants.”

“That’s too bad.” Chloe peered over the steep embankment. “If the fishing village was up here, how did people get down to the water?” The cobbled beach was forty, maybe fifty feet below.

“The slope was more gradual a century ago. Now, there are a couple of footpaths toward the south end.” Brenda waved one hand. “White fishermen started arriving in the 1830s. The first were just summer residents, but in 1848, a few families wintered over. In time there were maybe three hundred people living on Rock Island.”

Three hundred people, come and gone. “The village didn’t last too long though, right?” Chloe asked.

“A lot of men left during the Civil War. In the next decade even
more families moved on to Washington or one of the other
islands. The harbor here is very shallow. Little Mackinaw boats worked fine, but as boats got bigger, the fishermen needed a deeper harbor.”

Chloe considered the crescent-shaped shoreline below. The fishing village wouldn’t be a big part of the Pottawatomie Lighthouse story. Still, she needed to understand it. “Is there anything left of the village itself ?”

“A couple of stone foundations. A few unnatural depressions. Give me a handful of students and a month, and we’d know a lot more than we do today.”

“Funding for this kind of project must be hard to come by,” Chloe said sympathetically. She knew what it was like to grovel for dollars.

“And what little funding exists doesn’t go to excavating fishing villages.” Brenda’s tone turned bitter. “Not as sexy as shipwreck diving. And I know of two archaeologists who’ve gotten money to search for Viking ships and rune stones, for crying out loud.”

“Well, I hope the next grant application hits the jackpot.”

“Ironically, the fact that Rock is a state park works against me.” Brenda exhaled a plume of smoke over her shoulder. “I could drum up more interest if the site was about to be paved for a new strip mall.”

Even the mention of Rock Island being paved made Chloe’s stomach clench like a fist. “I’m sure there are stories of this place worth preserving in their own right.”

“Well, I think so,” Brenda agreed. “The community here was as complex as any other. You can’t study local history around here without reading about a lot of tragedies. People generally got along, helped each other out, but living in a small isolated community could also magnify problems. There was even a murder on Rock.”

“A murder on Rock?” Chloe repeated stupidly.

“It happened back in the 1850s. An islander named James
McNeil somehow got his hands on some gold coins. He called them his ‘Spanish Ladies,’ or his ‘Yellow Boys.’” Brenda made air quotes with her fingers. “He talked about them whenever he got drunk. Somebody bashed him in the head.”

“Yikes.” Chloe made a face. “I assume the gold disappeared?”

“You got it. And from time to time I find new dig-holes on the island.”

“You mean people are still searching for the coins?” Chloe asked. “Didn’t whoever killed McNeil take the gold?”

Brenda gave a
Who knows?
shrug. “I suppose someone might conclude that McNeil got killed because he wouldn’t produce the coins when someone tried to rob him. People have crawled all over Rock looking for the Spanish Ladies.” Brenda stubbed her cigarette out on a rock and carefully tucked the butt into an empty plastic prescription medication container. The container went back into her daypack. “Twice Garrett’s caught a couple of pirates from out-of-state using a metal detector, which isn’t legal in the park. Let me tell you, they’ll be sorry if
I
ever catch them messing around with a metal detector.”

Chloe understood why an archaeologist would have no tolerance for treasure hunters. Still, she was starting to wish that she hadn’t found Brenda Noakes at the enchanted meadow. Brenda Noakes was an enchantment-buster.

Ready to change the subject, Chloe gestured to the gnarled apple trees. “Do those trees date back to the village?”

“Local tradition says they do,” Brenda said. “Although Chester Thordarson, the guy who bought most of Rock Island in 1910, did some major landscaping in this area.”

“Oh, too bad.” Chloe flushed. “I just mean—it would be nice if the village site had been left undisturbed.” She tipped her head, considering the peaceful meadow. “How did the locals feel about Thordarson?”

“I suppose feelings were mixed. He was a genius inventor who hired a lot of Washington Islanders—carpenters, masons, landscapers, cooks. He also drank a lot and brought some guests of dubious repute here. Some people grumbled about a wealthy businessman buying so much property and bringing in all his wealthy Chicago friends.”